Clinton will prioritize and increase investments in public transit to connect Americans to jobs, spur economic growth, and improve quality of life in our communities. And she will encourage local governments to work with low-income communities to ensure that these investments are creating transit options that connect the unemployed and underemployed to the jobs they need. She will also support bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure

Clinton will make smart, coordinated investments that upgrade our aging rail tunnels and bridges, expand congested highway corridors, eliminate dangerous at-grade railway crossings, and build deeper port channels to accommodate the newest and largest cargo ships. Clinton will also focus on vital “intermodal” transfer points between trucks, rail, and ships—including the “last-mile connectors” between different modes, like the local roads that connect highways to ports. She is committed to initiating upgrades of at least the 25 most costly freight bottlenecks by the end of her first term. (bold italics in the original)

The Federal Aviation Administration is currently pursuing a “NextGen” upgrade program... But these efforts have fallen chronically behind schedule and well short of expectations. Clinton will get this crucial program back on track and ensure that it is managed effectively and with accountability.

Clinton will also invest in building world-class American airports...with reliable and efficient connections to mass transit. ...

committing that by 2020, 100 percent of households in America will have access to affordable broadband that delivers world-class speeds sufficient to meet families’ needs.

A wide-ranging system of advanced energy fueling stations for the 21st century fleet. A network of roadway sensors capable of alerting drivers to a dangerous icy patch a mile ahead.

Clinton will invest in creating a world-leading passenger rail system to meet rapidly growing demand and build a more mobile America.

We need a bold agenda to revitalize our aging water infrastructure and make it more sustainable and energy efficient. Clinton will work to harness both public and private resources to support these efforts.

Modernizing our dams and levees ...our efforts to maintain these critical structures are haphazard and under-resourced ...We need to substantially increase funding to inspect these structures, bring them into good repair, and remove them where appropriate. ...

Clinton will support efforts to increase dams’ capacity to deliver affordable and reliable electricity while reducing carbon pollution.

And it goes on like this.

The positive view of all this is that someone running the vast American bureacracy should have a detailed plan for what they want that bureuacracy to do. Well, there is plenty of detail here, and it's a good bet that Donald Trump has never thought about traffic jams at intermodal transfer facilities.

So how can I say there is no "plan?"

The other job of an Administration is to set priorities, which means something has to come second. This is what Clinton will propose in her first 100 days, and what she will accomplish in 5 years, with $50 billion a year? You must be kidding. Turning Amtrak alone into a "world-leading passenger rail system" would swallow her $275 billion

There are no numbers here anywhere. The $275 billion is clearly just a made up number that sounds sortof big but not so big as to attract tax-and-spend criticism. Because that is the last number in the whole document. In my rough calculation, she blew $275 billion by the first paragraph. As a consequence, analysts who calculate how many "jobs" the "Clinton plan" will create are just making it up too.

There is no timeline or process The President of the US is not a King or dictator who waves her hands and upgrades at intermodal transfer facilities just happen. The president appoints cabinet secretaries, who oversee a bureaucracy, which must, by law conducts proper cost benefit analysis, follow the Administrative Procedures Act, submit plans for EPA review, and so on.

The job of an Administration is also to understand and figure out how to surmount the institutional barriers that have stopped all of these fine and very old ideas from happening before. If Governor Brown and President Obama have not been able to lay a foot of high-speed track in 8 years, how is she going to do so much better?

As I mentioned in the oped, it fails to ask, why are these things problems in the first place? Apparently, traffic jams where trucks unload trains happen when the President is not, herself, there to run things. It's an implicitly damning condemnation of her predecessor -- he was either not studious enough to do his homework to this detail, or insufficiently "committed to initiating upgrades""at costly freight bottlenecks"In my world, things go wrong when markets go wrong, or the structures of government fail. In this world, things happen only on the will and attention of the President, including traffic jams. The people in charge now are either idiots, Republicans blocking progress, or just insufficiently guided by the great leader on top. One need do not analysis of why things are going wrong, just "fight" to fix them.

This "plan" implies a stinging rebuke of her predecessor, when you think about it. If all it takes is the force of Hllary's will to accomplish all this in 5 years for $275 billion, just why did he fail in 8 years with about $10 trillion? Maybe, just maybe, President Obama was trying darn hard, using the same methods, and came up short for a reason?

There is, literally, no plan. I looked hard through the website, and this "fact sheet" is the bottom level for infrastructure. Yet it keeps referring to what "the plan" will do, with no citations or links. That's all over the website. Thousands of pages talk about the plan, but no pages are, grammatically the plan itself.

Lost in details And this is just one fact sheet, 6 levels deep in the website. You get here from (click on bold)

Invest in building world-class American airports and modernize our national airspace system. ..

Build energy infrastructure for the 21st century. ..

(Looking over all 17 tabs of the "Economy and Jobs" tab, I lost count at 139 such bullet points.)

And finally this Fact sheet. Transport is actually one of the best thought out of all the tabs.

The point, if each such fact sheet promises that Mrs. Clinton is "committed" to details as fine as solving intermodal freight bottlenecks (the bold italics really got to me), across all 17 tabs of economic policy x 7 tabs of policy areas, she and her administration will get nothing done.

In sum, I think the picture I painted is unavoidable. Clinton and her team are well meaning, but this document (the website) displays an unbelievable naivete about how American government works. Every possible "policy solution" to every perceived problem in America got thrown in, with no thought of where the problems came from, no acknowledgement that good people have been trying hard for years, and that American government has an important set of checks and balances and a policy process. No, she will wave her hand and all will be well.

Perhaps she and her team are wiser, and this is just a campaign document designed to please media analysts and voters. But if that is the case, it displays an unbelievable disdain for the intelligence of the media and voters she wishes to attract.

Red Tape

The thousands of pages of the website do address how Mrs. Clinton will succeed where President Obama failed: She will "break through washington gridlock" and get rid of "red tape." Period.

This had me guffawing. Really? That's all it takes? Too bad President Obama never had that idea! (He did, and had an office devoted to the project. With little success.)

Her speech made some progress on just how she will break through "gridlock":

What we need is serious, steady leadership that can find common ground and build on it based on hard but respectful bargaining.

Leadership that rises above personal attacks and name calling, not revels in it....

ogether, we'll make full use of the White House's power to convene. We'll get everyone at the table – not just Republicans and Democrats, but business and labor leaders...academics and experts... and, most importantly, all of you. I want working people to have a real say in your government again.

That means we have to get unaccountable money out of our politics, overturn Citizens United, and expand voting rights, not restrict them.

Starting even before the election, we will bring together leaders from across our economy and our communities for meetings on jobs, American competitiveness, and working families.

I omitted the, well, "personal attacks" on Donald Trump, so we can think about just how plausible this is once he's off the stage. And then it's just roll-your-eyes funny. The major proposal is... more Town Hall meetings and "listening" tours? I would think, given current scandals, she'd be a little circumspect about "money in politics," and if you want to show your "listening" abilities, perhaps those who think Citizens United was a good idea might be a place to start.

If Mrs. Clinton wants to listen, and reach out to Republicans, she doesn't need to "convene" everyone at the table. And least of all, she doesn't need more policy-wonks stuffing her campaign website with every little idea that public policy schools and liberal think tanks dream up. Paul Ryan's "a better way" plan is right there on the internet. She should get a good glass of wine, sit down with that plan, pick 5 things she can live with, and go with them or see how to meet them half way.

This should be taken as constructive and nonpartisan criticism. Do not mistakenly imply anything about Mr. Trump in here. Mrs. Clinton is daily more likely to be our next president. I hope dearly that she could make some progress in coming to compromise on some of the simple and obvious steps that our country needs to take, steps pretty much every bipartisan commission agrees on -- tax and immigration reform, yes, infrastructure, reform of much regulatory process, and so on. She doesn't have to agree on policy, but an approach much more like the famous Shultz memo to Reagan -- written in November! -- is much more likely to succeed.

Even market failures are because everyone is maximizing something. It is still a Nash equilibrium. The problem is figuring out the best way to provide everyone with the right incentives, whatever "best" and "right" mean.

About "red tape" and such, this has all been hashed out, in great detail, in the BBC series, Yes Minister. For instance,

'This needs a sledgehammer,' I [the Minister] declared. 'We must cut through the red tape.' Bernard [the private secretary] piped up again. 'You can't cut tape with a sledgehammer, it would just...' and then he made a sort of squashing gesture. I squashed him with a look. (The Complete Yes Minister, p. 356)

and

...the three articles of Civil Service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly, it's more expensive to do things cheaply, and it's more democratic to do things secretly. (The Complete Yes Minister, p. 357)

Of course, most Americans don't truly appreciate bureaucracies the way people who grew up in Commonwealth countries do. Unfortunately, this seems to be changing . . .

"Clinton and her team are well meaning . . . ." What is your evidence for this claim?

"[T]his document (the website) displays an unbelievable naivete about how American government works." Hillary Clinton is the last person who could be called "naïve" about American government. What the website displays had better be called "pretend-naivete." As you go on to say, "this is just a campaign document designed to please media analysts and voters." But you add: "it displays an unbelievable disdain for the intelligence of the media and voters she wishes to attract." Hardly "unbelievable"! Forty percent of these voters (and maybe 5% of the media) favor Donald Trump: what *further* insult is possible? And even among Hillary supporters and the uncommitted, very few will feel insulted by this pabulum, in part because they won't read it carefully. (Personally, I am too alienated from the whole political process to feel insulted by anything that any of the Presidential candidates says.)

"In my world, things go wrong when markets go wrong, or the structures of government fail. In this world, things happen only on the will and attention of the President, including traffic jams." - but Grumpy, most roads are owned by governments, not the private sector, so the President does make a difference arguably, especially for interstate roads.

Even with a plan, government intervention in the economy since 2007 has yielded little improvement. Stimulus packages, near zero rates TBTF and Dodd-Frank not withstanding. More like sand in the gears. Little real recovery whether Keynesian or Neo-Keynesian "plans."

That is false, as a simple matter of logic. I have not analyzed Trump's "plan," nor Gary Johnson's, Paul Ryan's, Larry Kotlikoff's, Jill Stein's, to say nothing of detailed plans issued by various think tanks. Silence has no implications. Life is just too short to do everything.

Considering that you have found the time to lay into Hillary Clintons proposed economic policies three times in the last two weeks here on your blog, I do think that your very selective silence (namely on Trump's economic policies) has implications. But maybe that's just me.

I "accuse" you of extreme one-sidedness in your critique of economic policies of the two main presidential candidates (it is not in reality an accusation, just an observation - it is your blog, you write about whatever you want and turn a blind eye to whatever you want).

As evidence of one-sidedness, I point to the critique of Clinton's economic policies in the blog entries "Clinton Plan", "Summers on Growth and Stimulus", and "Federalization of Labor" and the utter absence of any critique whatsoever of any Republican economic policies (Trump's or anyone elses). By the way, when I say critique of Clinton's policies, I mean critique - there are apparantly no positive elements worth a mention in Clinton's economic policies.

But again, this is your blog, you are free to be grumpy about whatever you want.

I (obviously) don't speak for him, but I suspect Prof. Cochrane will allocate time reviewing plans proportional to the likelihood that the plan will be relevant (I don't say implemented). Towards that end, the biggest public good that Prof. Cochrane has provided is the Schultz memo. It is incredible. It is written in 1979, using the language of modern macro. Has stuff about managing expectations, establishing a reputation, externalities, agency problems, and so on. All the stuff that modern macro incorporates. None of the Keynesian stimulus nonsense. And it has the virtue of being written in plain English.

When either Trump or Hillary come up with a plan (or memo) like this, I suppose the rest of us can wake up. Until then, let us designate one (very kind) person to read all the drivel.

It took me a while to realize why this got under my skin. The rules of serious discussion are: you analyze arguments. If you have nothing to say about the argument, you shut up. Attacking someone's motivation from explicit statements is bad enough. Attacking a motivation because "we can infer from the fact you haven't done x that you're biased" is worse. On this blog, at least, let us stick to facts and arguments. If the argument is perfect, motivation doesn't matter. If you must argue about motivations, do so by actual statements. If you want to make insinuations about motivations, there are plenty of blogs that welcome such forms of discussion.

You only now realize that potshots are the very nature of what passes for Internet discourse? As a blogger since 1997 with more than two million words on the web let me give you some advice: let your readers defend you. If your product is thoughtful and good and the potshots are not thoughtful and good then your loyal readers will shout the bastard down. If they don't, then just maybe the bastard has a point...

Yes, but your arguments are not of purely logical or scientific manner. "There are no numbers anywhere". Yes, because it's a political document. Are there any numbers in Paul Ryan's agenda which you explicitly endorsed? No. Yet you endorsed his plans anyway.

My personal observation is that reviewing Trump's plan makes little sense - there's little plan there, everybody else has reviewed what there is of it and found it severely wanting, and there's little evidence that any plan he claims to have would actually be what he would do if elected. If Prof Cochrane wanted to critique Trump it really wouldn't be based on his plan, it'd be based on his personality and a range of other factors, and I get the impression that it isn't his strong suit - there are plenty of other people on the internet who can talk about that.

Ryan's plan is perhaps relevant, but I don't think Prof Cochrane's comment regarding that implied agreement with it (although he may well actually agree with it), his comment was that if you wanted to get things done then picking a few from the list of ideas the other side already claim to support is a good way to start. Claiming you'll get things done by making a new list of stuff that the other side don't support isn't a good way to start. That seems common sense to me, not something that implies agreement necessarily with Ryan's plan.

Dr. C., it's the economist's dilemma. If you present a thoughtful, measured analysis of politics, you get to make people on both sides mad. It's especially bad if you've earned the attention of a large number of people.

Is there even a plan from Trump to review? All I saw was a tax reform which wasn't completely useless (but mostly)and the rest ist populist speak or flip-flopping. Who can really say what Mr. Trump's plan is? I'm pretty sure not even Trump can.

There is no Hillary plan that I can see. Trump's plan is to trigger the free market with tax cuts to businesses and individuals. These cuts will awaken a dynamic creation of new businesses because of the increased disposable income to the companies and individuals. A cut in Capital Gains taxes will really kick-start new investment. Historically business and individual tax cuts will grow the Gross National Product by $2.00-2.50 for every dollar cut. ON Capital Gains cuts the Gross national Product will grow over $10 for every dollar cut in Capital Gains. Capital Gains cuts will bring in more revenue to the Federal Treasury because without the cuts many people would simply stand pat with their investment rather than cashing out, paying their Capital Gains taxes and reinvesting in new ventures. New ventures create more jobs. This always happens.Government spending of tax money has historically shown to return only about 50 cents on the dollar to the Gross National Product. It clearly demonstrates that individuals and companies spend the money far more effectively than Government.

Trump's income tax plan seem fine as far as it goes, but proposing massive tariffs, twice as much "infrastructure" spending as Clinton, and ruling out any cuts in Social Security or Medicare doesn't sound like a plan to "trigger the free market" to me.

I think it's true that tax cuts are a great idea. I question the accuracy of your quantification of those. The Laffer curve is real in that clearly there's a point on the curve where the tax rate is such that decreasing taxes actually increases government revenue. That doesn't say whether we're at that point.

I much prefer the focus on red tape and compliance costs, as those are an unseen tax on business, and even worse they cost government money to administer. Removing that red tape both saves the government money and reduces the cost of business. Cutting taxes reduces the cost of business, but ultimately costs government money (or at least reduces their revenues).

Plans (as opposed to "plan") are useful, even without priorities or pricing. Most experts agree the US has fallen behind in infrastructure maintenance. The actual plan seems clear: do as many of these as possible, funded by a combination of tax increases and sensible borrowing. By contrast, the Ryan "plan" is mostly tax cuts for the rich coupled with unspecified spending cuts. That's not a plan either.

And there are worse qualities in a President than attention to detail -- like ignoring reality. We have a binary choice and need an inequality (in the mathematical sense). Is the Trump expected utility greater or less than the Clinton expected utility? The expected utility from fixing traffic jams is higher than the expected utility of starting trade wars (or nuclear wars).

Most "experts" are paid to think infrastructure is "crumbling". They represent interests interested in employing their members in such projects. US infrastructure is the opposite of crumbling. For the given size and scope it is arguably the best in the world. That is no exaggeration: go to the World Bank infrastructure index (or whatever they call it)...the US is ranked about 4-5th overall, surpassed only by tiny city states, small population countries like Norway, or dense urban but geographically small countries like Germany. The US being multiple times bigger than any of these and still ranks 4-5th? That means no one even remotely compares.

“The fundamental fallacious assumption that all central planners make in the course of their divine intervention into our personal affairs is not that they are smarter than the average person or even that they are the smartest person alive. Rather it is that they are smarter than all of us put together.”

I put my name by my comments and I think John Cochrane is exactly correct in his commentary on the Clinton plan.

I often disagree with John Cochrane's perspective. So what?

I would like to see either presidential candidate address the serious issue of property zoning, wasteful "National Security" spending, ethanol and rural subsidies, aand a foreign policy that repeatedly results in fantastically expensive yet evidently counterproductive entanglements.

Given the polarization today compared to 1979, the next 4 will undoubtedly be kicked off with yet another Mitch McConnell statement to his caucus that their top priority will be to make Hillary a one-termer. Rinse & repeat.

Very interesting (and certainly thought-provoking, based on some of the comments to date) Op-Ed on the "plan" of our likely next president. A lot of this plan, however, seems similar to the typical "election speak" that we hear during every voting contest, and it will be interesting to see how Hillary's economic plan focus shifts following January 20, 2017, once it comes time to actually try to get things done.

Yes, 4 years of gridlock is what I see also, which isn't a bad thing. Sure, I would prefer a President who is wise and can implement sound solutions. But I don't believe either of the 2 candidates are capable of that. Consequently, 4 years of gridlock sounds pretty good to me. The major downside is that there are certain decisions that a Clinton President will be forced to take action on (e.g., Supreme Court nominations) and those could be a disaster.

On Supreme Court nominations, Congress (the Senate) could simply pare back the number of sitting justices rather than appoint new ones. The Constitution only requires a Chief Justice for the formation of a Supreme Court. The other justices exist because of an Act of Congress that can be modified at their will.

The nauseating bloat of politicians' "plans" is a byproduct of the public's misguided desire for "specifics". The notion that the President of the United States should have a prescription for every pothole, every burger-flipper, and every bad-aid handed out is a reflection of our expectations as a country to be taken care of from cradle to grave. WHich is how we get the political class we have now.

I would rather have candidates state the principles upon which they would govern and make decisions rather than a laundry list of wishful thinking. Boil it down to 3-5 core principles and argue the virtues of those principles rather than argue about asphalt vs concrete for the potholes.

Couldn't agree more and its the risk averse approach. The probability either candidate removes the existing nutty policies is smaller than the probability that they simple add more on top of the existing miasma.

It's a risk averse approach - but the risk (in my mind) is political. If Clinton's (or Trump's) proposals fail to deliver, does she / he get the heave ho?

With specifics, accountability becomes a a higher bar to jump over. Oh, so you say this pet project or tax break will deliver 0.1% more real GDP than if government sits on it's hands.

That's fine, if things don't work out, I would expect some measure of reprimand against the policy maker responsible for the failed policy or at least countenance against future recommendations by said policy maker.

Hillary sells what people buy. It wouldn't be a bad thing if people had complete information sets, but it is a bad thing when folks learn more about economics and politics from Hollywood Disney princesses than from an actual expert.

"Many failures of government can be traced to an attempt to solve problems piecemeal. The resulting patchwork of ad hoc solutions often make such fundamental goals as military strength, price stability, and economic growth more difficult to achieve."

Thanks to a few abusers I am now moderating comments. I welcome thoughtful disagreement. I will block comments with insulting or abusive language. I'm also blocking totally inane comments. Try to make some sense. I am much more likely to allow critical comments if you have the honesty and courage to use your real name.

About Me and This Blog

This is a blog of news, views, and commentary, from a humorous free-market point of view. After one too many rants at the dinner table, my kids called me "the grumpy economist," and hence this blog and its title.
In real life I'm a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford. I was formerly a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. I'm also an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute. I'm not really grumpy by the way!